Keep in mind people, a lot of these vitamins don’t have scientific basis because no one can be bothered spending money on research. If a company spends hundreds of thousands of dollars researching whether a vitamin actually does work, what do they gain from this? Nothing. There is no competitive advantage to this.

Or how about this argument. There is no scientific basis to religion, therefore no one is allowed to be religious. Or, no one is allowed to buy cigarettes because we know the damage it does.

As for the ear candles — Yes they should be removed, as they are dangerous. It is silly to extrapolate this to other vitamins and herbal remedies however.

This article is absolutely ridiculous, and I feel embarrassed for whoever wrote it. Oh wait, just some journalist trying to make money right? I guess money does talk.

Good to hear from an unashamedly science based pharmacist, by the way!

I am now a Pharmacist, after spending many years in science research. In my clinical practice I always give science-based advice to my patients, but I suspect that I am in the minority because community pharmacies are retail businesses, and not primary health care centres. Money talks — just look at the growth of “discount warehouse” pharmacies.

It saddens me greatly to see what is happening in community pharmacy re: the lack of opposition to homeopathy and other quack voodoo preparations. Unless tha PSA and the Pharmacy Guild find the balls to actively do something about it, then we can expect the credibility of Pharmacists to decline to extinction.

Unfortunately another fundamental is the appallingly poor level of scientific literacy out there in the community. Combine that with an innate belief among many that it is unethical to make money from illness and there you have it — mistrust of “Big Pharma”, frenzied media attacks on pharmaceutical companies for feeding poisons to innocent patients, and an explosion in the promotion of “nautral — no side effects is better” and we are continually on the defensive.

People no longer trust science any more. It is science that is under attack and yet they do not understand it.

We have to fight back. Long live the revolution! :)

In response to a question of the form “Don’t you think you are responsible, as a professional pharmacist, to present medicines that are known scientifically to be effective?”, he said “Well, I see that I’m providing customer choice”.

I didn’t have the presence of mind to point out that customer choice is a fallacy if the choice is not well-informed, and that the pharmacist in the store was responsible for that.

How can you have “appropriate training” for iridology? It _doesn’t work_.

Simple way to sort this out: have a label on the front of every bottle, packet, sign, etc, just above the product name: “Proven to work” in green, or “Not proven to work” in orange. Where “proven to work” is the standard set by the Australian Medical Board. When you can prove that your product works — for every one of the claimed benefits on the packaging — you can use the green label. Make it 20% the size of the largest font on the packaging.

Will

I always keep an eye out for so-called ‘natural’ rememdies in pharmacies and am particularly frustrated to see them on the same shelf as genuine, proven medicines. If people must seek these things out, I won’t stop them, but tacitly elevating them to the same status as medicines proven by medical science is irresponsible and dishonest.